The Off Topic Topic

[Ed Anger]

I just applied for a job in Alabama... 

You will be asked which football program you support. The answer is either 'Alabama' or 'Auburn'. Soccer answers will get you lynched.

[Ideologue]

I just applied for a job in Alabama... 

WE'RE FULL.

[Liep]

Why do the Danes score so highly on international happiness surveys? Well, they do have high levels of trust and social cohesion, and do very nicely from industrial pork products, but according to the OECD they also work fewer hours per year than most of the rest of the world. As a result, productivity is worryingly sluggish. How can they afford all those expensively foraged meals and hand-knitted woollens? Simple, the Danes also have the highest level of private debt in the world (four times as much as the Italians, to put it into context; enough to warrant a warning from the IMF), while more than half of them admit to using the black market to obtain goods and services.

Perhaps the Danes' dirtiest secret is that, according to a 2012 report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature, they have the fourth largest per capita ecological footprint in the world. Even ahead of the US. Those offshore windmills may look impressive as you land at Kastrup, but Denmark burns an awful lot of coal. Worth bearing that in mind the next time a Dane wags her finger at your patio heater.

I'm afraid I have to set you straight on Danish television too. Their big new drama series, Arvingerne (The Legacy, when it comes to BBC4 later this year) is stunning, but the reality of prime-time Danish TV is day-to-day, wall-to-wall reruns of 15-year-old episodes of Midsomer Murders and documentaries on pig welfare. The Danes of course also have highest taxes in the world (though only the sixth-highest wages – hence the debt, I guess). As a spokesperson I interviewed at the Danish centre-right thinktank Cepos put it, they effectively work until Thursday lunchtime for the state's coffers, and the other day and half for themselves.

Presumably the correlative of this is that Denmark has the best public services? According to the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment rankings (Pisa), Denmark's schools lag behind even the UK's. Its health service is buckling too. (The other day, I turned up at my local A&E to be told that I had to make an appointment, which I can't help feeling rather misunderstands the nature of the service.) According to the World Cancer Research Fund, the Danes have the highest cancer rates on the planet. "But at least the trains run on time!" I hear you say. No, that was Italy under Mussolini. The Danish national rail company has skirted bankruptcy in recent years, and the trains most assuredly do not run on time. Somehow, though, the government still managed to find £2m to fund a two-year tax-scandal investigation largely concerned, as far as I can make out, with the sexual orientation of the prime minister's husband, Stephen Kinnock.

Most seriously of all, economic equality – which many believe is the foundation of societal success – is decreasing. According to a report in Politiken this month, the proportion of people below the poverty line has doubled over the last decade. Denmark is becoming a nation divided, essentially, between the places which have a branch of Sticks'n'Sushi (Copenhagen) and the rest. Denmark's provinces have become a social dumping ground for non-western immigrants, the elderly, the unemployed and the unemployable who live alongside Denmark's 22m intensively farmed pigs, raised 10 to a pen and pumped full of antibiotics (the pigs, that is).

Other awkward truths? There is more than a whiff of the police state about the fact that Danish policeman refuse to display ID numbers and can refuse to give their names. The Danes are aggressively jingoistic, waving their red-and-white dannebrog at the slightest provocation. Like the Swedes, they embraced privatisation with great enthusiasm (even the ambulance service is privatised); and can seem spectacularly unsophisticated in their race relations (cartoon depictions of black people with big lips and bones through their noses are not uncommon in the national press). And if you think a move across the North Sea would help you escape the paedophiles, racists, crooks and tax-dodging corporations one reads about in the British media on a daily basis, I'm afraid I must disabuse you of that too. Got plenty of them.

Plus side? No one talks about cricket.

I'll have him know that we're the 3rd best in running on time.

[Sheilbh]

What's wrong with repeats of Midsomer Murders?

Edit: The more I read the more I hate that article. The Italians have very low private debt, one of the lowest in the EU and they have assets - hence the world's third largest market for government bonds. Don't really care about the environment. It seems ridiculous to attack Danes simultaneously for privatisation (which isn't always bad) and paying high taxes (ditto). Also the Danes have newspapers - how unfortunate.

The racism and pig farming criticisms seem legit though

[Liep]

What's wrong with repeats of Midsomer Murders?

Well nothing according to Danes, but this guy seems to take issue. Actually, he seems anti-British (note his cricket comments).

[Eddie Teach]

Honestly, you really can't expect a great entertainment industry from a country of 5 million. Canada is much bigger and they can't come up with anything better than Rush.

[Sheilbh]

Well nothing according to Danes, but this guy seems to take issue. Actually, he seems anti-British (note his cricket comments).

He writes for the Guardian. They only got him to comment on Scandinavia with sublime self-loathing because Julian Assange was busy

[Sheilbh]

Honestly, you really can't expect a great entertainment industry from a country of 5 million. Canada is much bigger and they can't come up with anything better than Rush.

Canada's long war of 1812 continues through their pop culture.

Denmark's doing pretty well right now - A Royal Affair, the Hunt, the Killing, Borgen, the Bridge etc. Most are being adapted or have been for British and US markets they're all also on TV a lot here. And they have magnificent jumpers.

[Liep]

Honestly, you really can't expect a great entertainment industry from a country of 5 million. Canada is much bigger and they can't come up with anything better than Rush.

Of course, he's mostly spewing bullshit.

We actually do have a successful entertainment industry, we have great green industries, we have one of the most equal income equality, we have a lot of free time (thanks "centre"-right think tank Cepos). And while our school system is expensive it's still quite good.

Real problems: too much privatisation, poor immigration system, and the same amount of assholes you'll find anywhere else.

[Liep]

Oh and for some reason we love reruns. They aired the "Matador"-series again last year and it trumphed the ratings for the 4th or 5th time.

[Jacob]

Oh and for some reason we love reruns. They aired the "Matador"-series again last year and it trumphed the ratings for the 4th or 5th time.

[Liep]

Oh and for some reason we love reruns. They aired the "Matador"-series again last year and it trumphed the ratings for the 4th or 5th time.

I still haven't seen it though.

[Ed Anger]

TBS used to show Beastmaster monthly, sometimes more than monthly.

[Tonitrus]

TBS used to show Beastmaster monthly, sometimes more than monthly.

I remember as a kid, playing as those guys that wrapped you in their wings and turned you into a pile of guts. 

[Liep]

The Socialist Party is near dismantling itself over a sale of the state energy company to Goldman Sachs. They'll likely leave the government and we'll have to go through another election.